As I said in my response… I know this has to be better and I honestly trust in that process.

And this is what I sent back to the customer support response I got as well as once again ccing and emailing Mr. Nadella, Mr. Picoto and Mr. Guthrie below:

Thank you ____ for reaching out to me. Just so that you are aware I actually have bugged into the feedback venue on this same issue a few months ago – see here: https://aka.ms/AA1aitt In fact it’s because of this earlier feedback posting that I went to the broader patching community to get their viewpoints and then reached out to Microsoft in the form of emailing Mr. Nadella, Mr. Picoto, and Mr. Guthrie as I saw things getting worse, not better after I entered my feedback into the Windows feedback process.

My apologies if I didn’t make all of you aware of this before but I am fully aware of how Windows 10 updating model works. I have in fact given courses on Windows 10 updating at several technology conferences, I write on the topic and give guidance to IT professionals, consultants and consumers as to patching processes and side effects.

It indicates that Microsoft uses the principles of being simple and predictable, agile and transparent. But that’s the thing, it hasn’t been in the past few months. It’s been chaotic, we’ve had a lack of clear communication, nor has it been as agile as it could have been with updates not being released to all platforms (we’ve had to import updates into WSUS, or the C and D patches aren’t offered on the WU channel for example).

We in the patching community would love it if you followed those principles. Please do so.

We in the patching community would request one agility change: that in the cadence of feature releases. Twice a year is causing too much disruption in the management of technology. It’s causing firms to not be fluid in their updates. It’s causing too many firms to consider LTSB as a means to slow down the cadence.

Since I didn’t open this service request, it is not my place to close it. I once again am emailing the individuals on my initial email to follow up that they better understand my ask: Please be simple. Please be predictable. Please be transparent. Please don’t compromise quality or compatibility. Finally please do understand the feature release cadence is too disruptive to your customer base.

Thank you for your anticipated follow up to my letter. I know as a shareholder and customer of your software that you HAVE to be just as concerned as I am about the quality issues of Windows patches. I urge you to go back to my letter where I have several recommendations and consider ways to improve. This has to get better and I anticipate that you are just as concerned as I am about this issue.

Good response! Although, I doubt anyone will take it seriously, especially not Satya Nadella. Microsoft has made clear what they want and which direction they want to take the company, and they’re not gonna listen to the customers anymore, that time is over.

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It’s just a lot of “say one thing while doing another”. (Redacted) is paid handsomely to spin reality to what the big, misbehaving company wants. You’re not even talking to people; you’re talking to a corporate machine.

Here’s the formula, in case it’s not obvious:

Try things that have never before been considered acceptable.

Say, “Oops, sorry” for the things that go too far and garner big public backlash.

Politely say, “thanks for your great feedback to help us make our product better”.

Do whatever the **** you want for profit and take home billions.

Repeat the above again and again, feigning “I’m new, I’m not the person you spoke with before” and “Oops, sorry” until the culture has changed in the company’s favor.

Here we are trying to convince Microsoft to go back to doing the things they made millions on (creating a product that has value and managing partnerships honorably) while they’re making billions being predatory. “Gee, Google and Apple are doing it, why not us?” Substitute the terms billions and trillions if you like.

You forgot to thrown in delusional disorder, which Type A personalities who also suffer from delusional disorder, can be extraordinarily convincing towards others, in order to get others to believe in their vision. This is exactly how cults are created by cult founders.

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Mimicking Apple and Google is a fool’s errand. Both have different roots and orientation. Apple has always been a hardware manufacturer that provided an OS and other software for their products. Google has been primarily and ad based model offering freeish services in exchange for some advertising (a model not that different for network and to lesser extent cable TV). MS has been a software/software services company from day 1 and it is still their primary income.

Each model leaves a company vulnerable in different ways. Apple is riding high today but is dependent on repeat hardware sales. This is something that is not always easy to maintain and there is always a risk a new product devastates their current markets. Google sells ads and is dependent on the perception that online advertising, overall, works. That perception changes and the value of the ads craters.

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Yup, that sounds like the plan alright.
I would add 1 item to your formulae:

Pay people to generate “fake news” and keep circulating it. The theory here is that if people hear anything enough times, they’ll believe it. Witness the “Windows 10 gets better with each release” and “Hassan: Windows 10 Won’t Waste Your Time With Unexpected Updates Anymore” links that have been recently referenced here at askwoody.

Maybe microsoft should buy a news network to make it easier to “say one thing while doing another.”

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It’s all corporate greed policy with MS at this point, and a paranoia of falling through the cracks because of more intelligent companies inventing better and reliable people oriented products, whether for big or small in the user world. Thank you Susan for a well thought out letter on behalf of those pushing for answers and positive feedback. But like most have implied or said, where MS is concerned, the term positive no longer plays a vital role. In the end, we the users are given an opportunity to take a big step forward into another world of devices that serve a competent level of consumer satisfaction. It’s time to walk away and stop being pushed around. Bigger units need more strategy and time, but it can be better as we join forces with a well run corporate arena. Moving on.

Win7 SP1 Home 64-bit; Office 2010; GrpA, when all is said, done and fixed, Mac OSX to help me sleep at night.

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Great response but I think the people at Microsoft are incapable of using this as a learning point to better improve Windows. Its one of those moments when you realize change won’t happen until users stop using Windows in large numbers.

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With all due respect – while I applaud fighting the good fight, the writing is on the wall. If you get a response, I expect another canned copy and paste affair. They just don’t care.

The only way they’ll get it is with a sharp decline in numbers, which hurts their bottom line. Switch to 7, 8.1, or Linux. Enough people do that, questions will be raised and shareholders will get ****** off. That’s a way to incite real change.

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If everybody just rolls over things will never improve. NEVER is the time to give up. As long as Microsoft keep responding, the pressure needs to be applied. If it gets to the stage tell Susan (more directly) where to go and refuse to respond to further correspondence, that’s the time to change tactics.

Meanwhile, Microsoft often says one thing and does another. Let’s hope they are doing that in relation to Susan’s first post.

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Nowhere did I say to “give up”; quite the contrary, in fact.
You, me, and everyone else fed up with this has 3 options at this point:
1) Accept it – “roll over” as you say
2) Complain about it
3) Change OS’

The general public does #1.
Susan and everyone who replied to her questionnaire did/is doing #2.
She got a canned reply, a worthless “ticket” being opened, she made a follow-up, and got another canned reply.
You tell me – where is this making any change?

I’ll state again – the only way to incite real change is to hurt their bottom line.
Their bottom line is the 1 billion devices running Win10 number they’ve dreamt up for the last year or so.
Their bottom line is what shareholders and people who are on the board who can actually make REAL change pay attention to.

This is general economics 101. The rich keep getting richer, they don’t care about people doing #1 or #2. If MS cared about #2, things would have already changed. There’s been more negative posts on /r and the official Windows 10 “Feedback Hub” app than there has been POSITIVE posts on /r and the Feedback Hub app. So far, all of those posts in the grand scheme of things has been nothing more than a blip on the radar.

Please, feel free to prove me wrong. I’d LOVE it if someone was able to. But I don’t think that’s possible.

I’m not saying “give up”, I’m not saying “roll over”.
I’m saying “this is not the way to hit them where it hurts”.
You take my alternative option for apathy, and it’s not.

The same things have happened (to MS) with Vista and Windows 8.
The numbers for those OS’ did not move, and so, 7 and 8.1 were born, bred, and pushed.
The same applies here; this could be and should be history repeating itself.
If the Win10 install base numbers drop, and I don’t mean 1%, I mean 10%, 20% or greater…. the board will notice. Nadella will have explaining to do, explaining he cannot do because he has no answers. When a corporation loses money and there are no good answers given, heads will roll.

Until then, here we are. Incite change. Recommend #3. #2 is an uphill battle, and like the saying goes, “**** always rolls down hill”.

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‘Different’ Anonymous here – I agree with what you had said. However, Microsoft has already indicated that Windows isn’t important to their future. They’re more concerned about ‘Cloud First’ and hence Azure, and AI, etc. That is where they’re going to make their money. So any changes to Windows will not deeply impact their bottom line and therefore Microsoft could care less.

In the enterprise world, Windows 10 is a monopoly. Windows 7 has less than a year and a half of support remaining and Windows 8.1 has always been a lame duck. I’d love for enterprise environments to switch to Linux (such as RHEL) in mass but the reality of the matter is the costs and effort to get there (i.e., support, porting and replacing apps, etc.) is just too high. So enterprises are forced to migrate to Windows 10. And since Windows 10 is a monopoly, Microsoft can do whatever they want with it.

Maybe I am naive, but I still have some hope that if indeed Nadella was aware of how Windows is perceived by this community, maybe he would consider making some changes. When you read those insider letters and some of what he said, it looks inspiring, like he truly wants Windows 10 to be the greatest Windows ever. I think he is wrong in his perception of what Windows should be to be the greatest Windows ever, but I have often seen much enthusiasm for it, although much less lately, that’s true.

Still, I would like to believe it is a big misunderstanding and them wrongly, in my perspective, thinking we need to understand their way better than see a huge conspiracy here. I am sure some idiots get their way in this organization and maybe Nadella is just too disconnected. In that sense, he is responsible for this mess, but I still have hope he is not the mastermind behind all those crazy things that happened like the GWX fiasco, the oops we forgot to honor your important preferences bugs and all the others there. I also think he doesn’t see the perverse effects of its satisfaction, usage metrics that invite his employees to cheat users to use more of the services.

I would love to have a constructive discussion with him about how there could be another flavor Windows more tailored for that type of users that might not be mainstream, but still significant, an SMB/SOHO/pro user version. Noel would be so good at that. I can picture Nadella as incompetent in a way at least at managing Windows if not Microsoft, but I have a hard time seeing him as an evil man.

So, Susan, I sincerely hope your letter gets read by who should read it and that at least it makes them pause a second and think about it.

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If you they Bug you to the feedback hub again you might want to write Sata on Twitter I will be willing to Retweet.

It cannot be that’s impossible to talk to a person like him. A CEO is still a human.

I am so happy that you see things like me. If you are Patchlady I am your male counter part. I am so sick about the shortcomings of WSUS that does not keep up with Microsoft changes and force US to manually import and decline updates all the time since 2016!

Feedback hub is irrelevant also server.uservoice changes nothing.

I am leaving feedback since 2014 and only few changes got acknowledged. And hey they mentioned my Bug in the logs about floppy drives in 1511. But that’s not enough.

I am trying to stay in touch with MSFTs on Twitter to improve things but it’s actually hard like they have NDA applied not to admit issues.

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Not forceful enough lol, “please be better, please do those things you said you would..” will just get an “ok!” and them going right back to doing what they’re doing.

Instead gather names, positions and comments (like you did) from those I.T professionals in industry who are their direct customers of this, (especially any with purchasing or decision making power), and just select 5-10 of those and send them to MS, every.day.

Literally just keep forwarding on the comments, and the pure comments, direct from the horses mouth, of what people are thinking of them and dealing with. Any proof of anyone “switching” to something else, or taking a different strategy (such as blocking updates altogether) will be good.

I disagreed on the direction the publishers were taking a game once (regarding anti-piracy measures that only hurt the paying customer), so I simply sent them a picture of my Amazon cancellation and an explanation, and went on my way. Better than pleading for a change of mind that just isn’t going to happen. Only money talks.

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M$ imposed the twice-per-year upgrades mainly to stop Win 10 Ent users from buying and running Win 10 Ent for up to 10 years without paying extra due$ to M$, eg annual subscriptions, Software Assurance/Insurance “premiums”, the twice-as-costly 10-year LTSC edition, etc.
*** If the companies don’t pay extra to M$, they could only run their bought-version of Win 10 Ent for 18 months, which is the official EOL for each new version of Win 10.

Previously, companies could buy and run the 2009-released Win 7 Ent for up to 10 years until EOL in 2020.

For consumers running Win 10 Home & Pro, they “enjoy”(*sic*) the free and forced twice-per-year upgrades until EOL in 2025 and for as long as their OEM computers are still supported. Theoretically, consumers could run their bought-version of Win 10 Home & Pro for up to 10 years until EOL in 2025.
*** But I think it is likely that M$ will soon stop Win 10 computers that are more than 4 years old from being upgraded. Remember M$’s processor-blocking updates?? This will force many affected users to buy new OEM Win 10 Home & Pro computers every 4 years = more profit$ for M$.
*** Win 10 Ent computers that are more than 4 years old will be affected as well.

If M$ listens to Susan and extends the upgrade cadence to once-per-year, M$’s grand plan to make more profit$ from Win 10 will likely be negatively affected, especially in 2020. Still, once-per-year upgrades may be possible.

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It seems like this letter and message along with the survey ought to be publicized more. Has anyone tweeted links to above directly to Microsoft? Or posted to their Facebook page?This way more of the public might see it. Askwoody, while a very active forum, may not be familiar to a large population of windows users. Just a thought, though I don’t know how kosher that might be.

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*** But I think it is likely that M$ will soon stop Win 10 computers that are more than 4 years old from being upgraded. Remember M$’s processor-blocking updates?? This will force many affected users to buy new OEM Win 10 Home & Pro computers every 4 years = more profit$ for M$.

And, of course, hardware manufacturers are quite happy about this enforced cycle of buying new hardware.

Clearly, the days where Microsoft could just post updates and a grateful user base would download them are over.

Or perhaps it’s more frightening than that and it’s not that Microsoft isn’t doing a good job but that nobody could – updating an operating system smoothly across hundreds of millions of computers has become too complex. You will never satisfy everyone and the people who are dissatisfied are likely to seek out others of their kind.

In the nick of time, Microsoft is reportedly looking to launch a Windows desktop-as-a-service called Microsoft Managed Desktop (MMD), under which the company will manage the whole Windows installation, including updating, for a fee.

Comes across (to me at least) as yet more Microsoft apologism, which is a shame because this is certainly an issue that needs addressing and not dismissal. Sophos is another company I’m not a big fan of, and in my personal experience I’ve found their offerings to be obtuse, but I can’t help wonder if their (weak) defense of “maybe its impossible” is an attempt to better themselves off of this. I imagine at some level or another they’re in bed with MS, especially given that they offer to “harness the power of deep learning neural networks” for cloud platforms that include Azure as a front-running name.

And shilling for “Microsoft Managed Desktop”… well I get the chills. I wonder if they’re planning to make a play at being an AV offering for such a dystopian future.

Regardless, thank you Susan for the work you’re doing- yours is the righteous fight.

My question to those who say updating an OS or a system is inherently a minefield is why Linux users seem to have less problems with bad updates? As I have noted before, I use Manjaro on my development box. As an Arch derivative, Manjaro and its Arch relatives are consider fussy by Linux users. But my experience with Arch based distros is they are much easier to maintain and stabler than Windows (I use Windows 7 at work). Certainly the patching seems to much less of a daily hassle. Linux Mint installs I support hardly ever report any updates (I do not remember the last time an update caused a reported problem). And the hardware is not optimized for Linux as it is mostly a variety of laptops.

I’ve used both Windows and Linux / Unix in various forms (Ubuntu, Debian, CentOS, Red Hat, freeBSD being the main ones) for a few years now, and in my experience when it comes to non-Windows systems its generally more a question of environment and purpose more than anything else. For any kind of use I would term as “casual”- browsing, email, word processing and the like- there are rarely problems. Even code development is arguably easier than Windows in some regards, so long as you’re not doing something particularly complex. I think its come a long way in the last decade or so to catch up insofar as bog-standard desktop expectations go (which includes ease of patching). I still remember my first foray years ago with Slackware and having to manually compile alot of functionality. The maturity of package managers changed that to a large extent.

Where you can get Windows-like issues is if you’re doing deep customizing though. Getting into the weeds with custom kernels, auditd, SELinux, and of course systemd all cause myself and Linux vets I work with a lot of headache. The problem is if you’re in an enterprise realm with stringent requirements, these are all things that are likely to become involved if systems need to be secure to some information assurance standard. As such, patching can become significantly more involved and things may break often.

However- bringing it back around before I wander further off topic- there is what I consider a fundamental difference with Linux and Windows here. With Linux you’re talking about a system you can- theoretically- compile form scratch. You can control almost everything- the only real limiting factor is time, and maybe where one’s level of aggravation tops out. I’m not aware of any offhand, but you can rip out any telemetry you don’t like. You can control update schedule. Patches are often vigorously tested by the open source community, and if they do break something it is usually trivial to roll them back. Windows affords very little- if any- of that control to anyone. It has a single true master- Microsoft- and would appear to be built as such. Now it obviously doesn’t need to be this way, but the current reality is that to achieve a similar level of control in regards to patching, one has to resort to hacky fixes and a general stance of having to fight off the OS more than getting the OS to do what is needed.

My apologies if this post has moved off the topic, but this is a particular point of annoyance for me. Too often I have folks above me in the hierarchy- who predominantly use Linux- ask why I can’t make Windows do X Y or Z easily. In their *nix-based worldview, you should be able to make the OS do something even if it can’t or won’t out of the box. They have trouble understanding how Microsoft could rend so much control from users or admins without any kind of recourse that isn’t “hacked together” or requiring an expensive amount of time to develop and refine.

Oh, I have thought about the proper ways that Microsoft could have recovered from the Win8 fiasco, and what is a Win10 Great Recession in terms of Microsoft’s anticipated goals for Win10. Microsoft so could have made Windows magnificent again, and so could have retained Windows as Microsoft’s original and primary cash cow. Microsoft so could also created several magnificent paths for Windows, via Windows Flavors (yes, I am coining this phrase), which could have been tailored to the Specific Needs of specific categories of consumers.

Yet Microsoft chose not to follow the obvious paths since Microsoft was h*** bent, under delusional Sinofsky and now under the equally delusional Nadella, on trying to use Windows for the sole purposes of trying to, years too late, to break into the cell phone market (Sinofsky), and on trying to use Windows to overthrow Google’s advertising revenue monopoly (Nadella).

I fear that too many years have passed, and that too much damage has been done in order to undo what damage has been done. The damage isn’t simply limited to all consumers who use Windows. Instead the damage has impacted and increased the decline of PC sales. Yet Microsoft cites to the latter as a reason for Windows “obviously” becoming increasingly non-relevant in the modern world, without admitting that Win8 exacerbated the decline of PC sales. Microsoft itself is forcing Windows to become increasingly non-relevant in the modern world, because Microsoft will not acknowledge that Microsoft itself is significantly responsible for the continuing decrease in PC sales. Microsoft is just like the US Navy of old, in which the Navy was always perfect, and that the Navy itself was not responsible for various naval disasters. At the end of the day the Navy of old always found a scapegoat to blame.

This is the shortest and most succinct way that that I can express my observations and correlations about what I have seen in the past several years.

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Empires have vanished because they extended their frontiers to the point they could not be defended well enough by their existing armies, armies that become crushingly expensive to maintain properly, their communication lines from the provinces to the over-centralized government got too long for the means available at the time to bring information and send back decisions fast enough, infighting for top positions bled their polities of human talent, wealth and resources, and so they ended up in ruins now days mainly of touristic interest and no longer well understood significance.

Maybe so too companies may grow too big to be run properly, particularly by men of modest acumen and far more confidence in themselves than they should rightly have. With yes-men for company and serious critics kept studiously at bay. Open source OS and applications such as those of the Linux world are developed and maintained by groups and companies of quite different sizes and none responsible for all of it. Maybe that, which makes mass adoption difficult, is also their saving grace?

I also thank you for sending the survey results to Microsoft and all of your further contributions on this subject. I participated in the IT professional version of your survey.

I am a solo entrepreneur focused on HIPAA and NIST Cyber Security Framework security risk assessment/analysis. My hardware is a Lenovo ThinkPad Yoga S1 (first generation Yoga) and the software center of my universe is Windows 10 Pro running Office 365 Business Premium. Both Windows and Office 365 are being updated on the Semi Annual Channel. I have been using this process for about twelve months and it has worked well for me. I really like this combination for small businesses like mine. I expect to add a desktop/tower device running Windows 10 Enterprise and Office 365 Enterprise E3 and also using the Semi Annual Channel to update both of them. This will be so that I can understand what larger prospects and customers are doing.

I believe that Microsoft will have to improve their update processes in order to grow their business. In my mind, Microsoft will have to improve their update processes in the current iteration to be credible in selling Microsoft 365 for Business and Microsoft 365 Enterprise versions (each of which consist of an integrated combination of Windows, Intune and Office 365) going forward.

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How long have we been on DEFCON-1? Must’ve been several weeks now if I’m not mistaken.

Microsoft has always had problems with patching Windows, like all the half-baked patches they’ve thrown down the automatic updating chute to mess up home computers like it’s the apocalypse. The fact that their patches have been somehow even worse shows that the trend has always been downhill. I don’t exactly hold my breath hoping that Microsoft’s patches will actually improve at all, given their history of clearly not learning.

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Always interesting, often frustrating, how communication is received and reflected. I remember words like “ask” and “please” being used in Susan’s communications where she “tells Microsoft” what to do.

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